


by a thread

by WingedQuill



Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Amputation, Body Horror, Dissociation, Episode: s01e06 Rare Species, Gen, Injury, Major Character Injury, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2020-10-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:27:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26766544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Geralt's decision to be the last man in line to cross the dwarves’ shortcut is not, on its surface, a bad one. It doesn’t bear obvious signs of foolishness or hastiness or hubris. It isn’t something he can honestly say he shouldn’t have done. It isn’t something he could’ve avoided by knowing better, thinking better, being better.It’s a simple desire to protect the people that are important to him. To watch their backs.It’s also the worst decision he’s ever made.
Series: Whumptober 2020 [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950922
Comments: 10
Kudos: 88





	by a thread

**Author's Note:**

> You know, during Geralt Whump Week, one commenter misread the title of the event and thought I was doing Geralt Whump Month.
> 
> This one's for you.
> 
> (Don't worry, I'll throw in some other characters in the hurt pool while I'm at it. Ger Bear won't have all the fun. And I can't promise I'll do every single prompt, especially if I wanna update any of my many...many WIPs...but I'll try my best!)

There are a number of foolish decisions that Geralt has made in his lifetime. Trying to comfort a terrified little girl that was only recently a flesh-hungry beast. Making a hasty wish while holding a djinn’s seal in his hand. Murdering a young woman who only wanted justice. 

Were he just a bit quicker, just a bit smarter, just a bit less worn into his thought patterns after decades of violence and exhaustion, he would have realized that all of these decisions were awful. Had he just a few more moments to think he would have, he hopes, done something else entirely.

This decision to be the last man in line to cross the dwarves’ shortcut is not, on its surface, a bad one. It doesn’t bear obvious signs of foolishness or hastiness or hubris. It isn’t something he can honestly say he  _ shouldn’t  _ have done. It isn’t something he could’ve avoided by knowing better, thinking better,  _ being  _ better.

It’s a simple desire to protect the people that are important to him. To watch their backs.

It’s also the worst decision he’s ever made.

He realizes that as soon as he trusts his weight to a board that has borne too many feet over the years. 

The world swoops up into his stomach.

_ “Geralt!” _

Jaskier and Yennefer shriek his name as he slides down the chain, board dangling uselessly under his feet. He grits his teeth and drags himself up, hand over hand, scrambling for stable ground

In another world, in a world where Geralt made a different choice, Borch is the one who falls. He hangs on the chain for a moment, still and peaceful, then he accepts his fate and lets himself be swallowed by the mist. Though he is lost, briefly, the chain stays bolted to the mountain.

But Geralt does not have dragon’s wings, nor a dragon’s calm over an impossible height. So he fights, and curses, and tugs at the chain with his considerable strength. And just as a board ca n only bear so many feet, a rusty link ca n only bear so much tension.

The sound it makes when it snaps, a horrible shrieking crack, will follow Geralt out of his nightmares for years to come. His whole life narrows down on that sound, and he realizes what has happened before his body even registers the sensation of falling.

The world tumbles by, too much and too fast, and he flings out his arms, scrabbling for purchase. His shoulder hits something, his foot hits something else—he doesn’t know what, he  _ can’t  _ know what, everything is a blur of gray and white and black, flashing and flickering and there’s  _ nothing he can do. _

And then.

A pull so sharp it’s a tear, a stop so hard it’s a blow. Something wraps around his wrist and drags, drags,  _ drags  _ his shoulder out of its socket _ ,  _ drags a scream out of his lungs, drags his life away from the grasping, greedy fingers of death.

The world solidifies around him.

He’s dangling in the air, twirling like a hanged man at the end of a noose, suspended by his wrist rather than his neck. His right arm is a column of firebright pain, carrying his entire weight on his wrecked shoulder, a nd  broken elbow, and  _ gods above and below, what the fuck happened to his wrist— _

He doesn’t want to look down at the remaining fall, and he doesn’t want to look up at the mess of meat his arm has surely become. So instead he looks out. The mist blankets everything, coating whatever lies beyond his tiny bubble of agony in featureless white. He watches as the fog of his pained breaths curls out and joins the mist. His spirit might join it, too, after he dies. This doesn’t even remotely qualify as a proper burial.

_ Don’t find out,  _ Vesemir murmurs in his ear, just like he had when Geralt lay dying from a striga’s claws, when he knelt, beaten and bloody, in front of a mad executioner, when the grasses burned him like a tree in a forest fire.

That last time—first time—might have even been real.

_ Don’t find out what your afterlife looks like. _

Looking up is still too awful so Geralt looks down. A ledge, not ten feet below him, juts out from the mountain face. A mountain face pockmarked with giant boulders and ledges and great bursts of rock. Handholds and footholds aplenty, if he can only make it to a decent starting place. He breathes. Breathes. Just need to get to that ledge. Just need to free your hand.

There is something warm and wet trickling down his neck, soaking into his hair, streaking across the white fire of his elbow without soothing it. He stares down at the ledge, and at the spots of red rapidly accumulating on its surface.

He can’t move his fingers.

_ Breathe,  _ Vesemir says.

He can’t—

_ Just breathe. _

It’s his sword hand.

It’s his fucking—

He closes his eyes. 

Reaches up his left hand to brush along the flames. 

Finds the biting, rusted metal of the chain, and it’s lost its mountain-air chill—it’s warm, and wet, and surrounded by,  _ embedded in,  _ something squishy that sends the fire screaming when Geralt touches it.

The red on the rocks below is covered by the remains of last night's dinner, and Geralt heaves and hacks until there’s nothing left in his stomach. The bitterness of the bile almost covers up the smell of metal.

He’s not sure how long he hangs there, letting his mind skirt around what must be done. It’s long enough to give up trying to move his fingers. It’s not long enough to accept that he will never move those fingers again.

_ Breathe. _

_ Breathe. _

He brings his left hand down to his hip.

_ Breathe. _

Pulls a dagger out of its sheath. 

**_Breathe._ **

And cuts through the fire.

**_BREATHE_ **

Fall.

He lands in a puddle of his own blood and vomit and lets his body move on autopilot, lets his survival instincts press Igni into his own skin until the smell of sizzling flesh is everywhere, lets his legs force him closer into the mountain’s face and further away from the yawning edge, lets his mind lock away the loss of his sword hand for a later, safer Geralt to grieve.

_ Survive,  _ Vesemir tells him. One last order, strong and grim. The same thing he told Geralt before he set out on the Path for the first time.  _ Survive.  _

He takes a deep breath, looks up at the mountain face, and ignores the way his hand seems to wave at him from the end of the chain.


End file.
